RIP Davy Jones: Remembering The Monkees

To quote a song from Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones Ltd, it’s Hard to Believe. Davy Jones, the cuddly member of the Monkees, the master of the maracas, and the guy with the fanciest footwork, has left us at the age of 66.

Davy Jones, whom every girl in my third grade class crushed on back in 1967, who nicknamed the profile-less Micky Dolenz “Skillet Face” upon first meeting him, who cheerfully reprised his role as Marcia Brady’s prom date in Real Live Brady Bunch stage shows, and whose rabid female fans cheesed Jimi Hendrix off by yelling “Foxy Davy!” during “Foxy Lady” when the guitar legend opened for the Prefab Four, has gone on to that Groovy Crash Pad in the Sky after suffering a heart attack.

Here's Jones showing off his British music hall roots in this clip from the movie Head, plus some memories of the Monkees we originally published in 2008.

In the Beginning...

Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider were aspiring filmmakers who believed that Beatlemania could be somehow translated into a US phenomenon.

Their ultimate inspiration came from the “Can’t Buy Me Love” sequence in the 1964 Beatles film A Hard Day’s Night. They came up with the concept of a sitcom about a pop band in which each episode would include an original song and a fun film “romp,” similar to the one featured in the Beatles’ film.

The pair placed ads in trades like the Hollywood Reporter during the summer of 1965 requesting “folk & roll musicians-singers for acting roles in new TV series” while simultaneously mining the songwriting talents of yet-to-be-discovered future stars such as Neil Diamond, Harry Nilsson and John Stewart. Some 400 hopefuls auditioned for the show, and eventually the final four chosen were:

Davy Jones: The Boy Who Would've Been a Jockey

David Jones was born in Manchester, England, and (thanks to his diminutive stature) his father hoped he'd become a jockey. However, a talent scout happened by his school, liked Jones' looks, and asked if he could sing. David was recruited to play the Artful Dodger in a West End production of Oliver! He ended up moving to New York to perform with the Broadway cast of the show, which is how he happened to appear on the Ed Sullivan Show the same night the Beatles made their U.S. television debut. Jones later said, "I saw the girls in the audience going crazy and decided that I wanted a piece of that."

Michael Nesmith: Songwriter to Linda Ronstadt

Micky Dolenz: Circus Boy

Peter Tork: Suggested to the group by Stephen Stills!

John Lennon Praised Them

The show was an immediate hit and won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series after its first season. Their success was something of a double-edged sword, however, because the group felt compelled to go out on tour to prove themselves to those critics who claimed the Monkees weren't musicians. But in the record business, it's always a matter of striking while the iron is hot, so the band had to write and record songs in between gigs. And then there was the matter of filming the next season of the series. As John Lennon later said when asked his opinion of The Monkees: "They've got their own scene, and I won't send them down for it. You try a weekly television show and see if you can manage one half as good!"

Neil Diamond's First Hit

If nothing else, the Monkees gave some fledgling songwriters their first national exposure. "I'm a Believer" gave Neil Diamond his first number one hit as a songwriter. They also gave Harry Nilsson (who would later go on to have hits on his own with "Without You" and "Everybody's Talkin'," to name a few) his chart success when they recorded his tune "Cuddly Toy."

Davy Jones Was Not a Believer

One of the Monkees' number one hits was "Daydream Believer," a song Davy Jones hated at first. He felt that it wasn't in his key, and he didn't understand the lyrics. (He was from England and didn't know what a "homecoming queen" was.) It wasn't until after the tune topped the charts that he grudgingly admitted, "Maybe it's not that bad of a song after all."

The Alternate Title of "Alternate Title"

Micky Dolenz composed a tune that he named after a phrase he'd heard on a British TV series called Till Death Us Do Part. When the song was released, however, BBC censors insisted that its name — “Randy Scouse Git” — be replaced with an alternate title, since it was some sort of obscenity in British slang. Dolenz complied by re-naming his song "Alternate Title," and it went all the way to #2 on the British pop charts in 1967.

Please feel free to share your Davy love and favorite Monkees TV moments/songs/whatever at this sad time. It will hopefully make us all feel just a little bit better.